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Kirk Nahra Weighs In on Health Information Exchange Data Breach

GovInfoSecurity.com

September 22, 2016

Kirk J. Nahra, chair of Wiley Rein’s Privacy Practice and co-chair of the Health Care Practice, was quoted in a September 22 GovInfoSecurity.comarticle regarding the recent unauthorized access of sensitive patient data via a health information exchange (HIE) network at a Boston health clinic. The incident was reported to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on September 12 and involved the data of roughly 4,000 patients. While HIEs are intended to simplify and expedite the electronic sharing of patient health information between doctors, nurses and pharmacists, they also pose a threat to health care organizations’ ability to protect their sensitive patient data.

"The issues involving an HIE are enormously complicated, and will heavily depend on the facts," said Nahra.

Nahra also noted that, "there are lots of tricky issues in terms of who has the obligation to do what” in a HIE-related security incident, "and I would expect there to be significant scrambling from the players to figure out how best to handle this kind of situation."